1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of information handling including information integrity; storage, distribution and verification of accuracy and authenticity of origin.
2. Description of Related Art
In today's information handling systems, there is no established standard for granting, managing, and authenticating credentials such as diplomas, licenses and certifications awarded to target individuals and organizations by academic institutions, governmental authorities and professional organizations. As a result, there are widely differing methods established by each school, agency and other credentialing authorities for these purposes.
Examples are insurance certificates and licenses. Often a craftsman must provide a certificate of insurance to a prospective customer and/or a license to an insurance company to support an invoice for professional services. These documents can be sent by US Postal Service, by facsimile, by e-mail and by providing them on a web site on the internet or by other direct computer to computer communication.
These methods are often inefficient, relying on manual procedures for requesting information and not providing timely information since each issuing authority may respond to the interested party at their own schedule. These methods may compromise privacy, and do not provide a means to easily integrate with other systems. Usually, interested parties needing to verify or validate credentials claimed to be held, must individually contact the credential authorities for this purpose which is a cumbersome and often manual process that may not provide timely information. In the process, the interested party is often exposed to unnecessary and possibly prejudicial information such as an applicants age, gender or race that is irrelevant to the decision that must be made by an interested party.
US20030084288 for example, discloses an identification management system. The user 700 communicates with the service provider 715 to issue a service request. The service provider 715 assesses the credential request and the information submitted by the user. After that, the service provider contacts an authority 705/710 to perform dynamic credential authentication 740, 745. The authority is the State Department, Military, Bank, Post Office etc.
US20050257253 discloses a credential issuance system such as might be used in a department of motor vehicles office or passport issuing office. The system brings together, data and a picture for example and creates a plastic card or a smart card credential and a record in a credential database at the issuing office.
US20020116634 discloses a life long learning history certifying system. The history certification center 10 is connected to certifee 50 and input 60, 601, 602 personal computer terminals via the internet. The system helps in managing, controlling, and validating personal credentials from multiple organizations. The entity requiring the certification must access the system directly and the person whose records are being investigated has little or no control over the content.
US20050130114 discloses a system for automatically causing degrees and certifications to have a value that increases, decreases, or expires in a graduated fashion based on a number of criteria, such as an automatic assessment of the degree field or area of expertise and pace of change within a particular field. Using an exponential decay function or other decreasing function, a degree's “strength” may decrease through time. A degree broker provides the degree value to employers or team assemblers upon request for a fee.
US20030115489 discloses a system where ID and password need not be entered at every web site 7 but is maintained at an authentication site 5. A web site 7 looks to the authentication site 5 for customer ID verification and personal information presumed to be information such as address, payment capability etc.
US20070006299 discloses a user name and password management system. The user name and password are referred to as credentials and they are used to control communication between a handheld device and a network of devices.
US20070101413 discloses a system that provides access to a users personal data when the requester provides a credential such as user ID and password, smart card data, biometric data etc.
US20040225882 discloses a system for maintaining qualification of an operator. The system includes a IC card or memory stick 1 that stores skill authentication data. A server 3 collects and analyzes data related to the operator such as self-learning and training sessions that the operator completes and the results are stored in the card or stick. The server 3 manages the data flow between the mobile terminal 2 and the PC 4 via network 5 or LAN 6. The operator can add new skill and/or qualification information and update the qualification level/expiration date.